What has his death taught you?
What has it taught me?

Impermanence—
not as philosophy,
but as bone and breath,
as the way a name
suddenly becomes memory.

The wheel turns.
Karma is not punishment,
only momentum—
a mind disturbed,
forever arguing
with the love it was born from.

Compassion
is the only honest response.
The only medicine
that does not create
another wound.

Dennis, like us
suffered
inside this dissonance—
my uncle,
your brother,
someone’s father,
someone’s son,
a husband still spoken of
in the present tense.

Like us,
he tried to soothe the ache
by owning things.
Ancient wisdom warned us:
no object can hold
what we are looking for.

Still we fed the ego,
this starving god—
did we nourish it
past the point of return?

When I die,
Denska and I
will be the same
for one perfect moment.

But will we?

What energy have we released
into the winds of this world?
What continues on
after the body loosens its grip?

Love?
Greed?
Ignorance?

What will you leave behind—
not in inheritance,
but in imprint?

A wind that returns year after year.

What do you wish
to bequeath
the land of the living?